Doomsday: The Final Solution
by The Five Ringmasters
Summary: The drastic decision to reduce crime in America saw the 1st Games; One child from each state sent to kill each other for the adults' crimes. The Games start now. 2012. Written by Laralulu, Maddie Rose, WolfRida, Tare-Bear & The Girl Who was On Fire.
1. Time's Up

**Disclaimer: We're not Suzanne Collins. If we were - we wouldn't be here- we'd be sitting in a luxurious mansion surrounded by smexi men. Since we _are_ amazing people, we've put the confirmed names on the list.  
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><p>The Ringmasters: The Girl Who Was On Fire, WolfRida, Tare-Bear, Maddie Rose and Laralulu.<p>

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><p><strong>Since this is a collaboration between five of us, we decided to do something a little bit different. If you have five authors, why make just the one story?<strong>

**So we ended up with a Games that are totally different to anything we've seen before.**

**What's so special about them?**

**They're set now.  
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_Allan Teller- Five Star General and Gamemaker of the 6th Games_

Sometimes I wonder how they got me back here again; organising to send 50 kids to their deaths for the sins of their parents.

I was a five star general 6 years ago, on the front lines and fighting for my country; for our pride and for our families. Sure, the job wasn't glorious. In fact, it was filthy and often the blood on your hands got so thick that you didn't want to get up for work the next day, but in the end you know you're doing the right thing.

The press release that changed my life, and the lives of 250 children, came suddenly.

There was no warning as the world came crashing down around our ears.

_The President's face appeared on the screen._

_It looked like just another news story, some cameras flashing and the American flag flying proudly behind him, but the story was far from ordinary._

_"Good evening people of America," he began, "2006 saw the darkest year in our nation's history. The worst crime rates we have seen and some of the most despicable crimes exacted on our own people._

_"This was no work of outsiders, but from within our own nation. Thousands of people killed or maimed by their neighbours, their friends and even their family._

_"Our attempts to decrease the crime rate through extra policing, stricter penalties and harsher treatment have done nothing to stop these heinous crimes. Congress has met to debate the solution to this deadly era in the evolution of the American nation._

_"Despite our best efforts, we came to only one solution drastic enough and harsh enough, to send a message to every citizen of America to say that this is not right, we do not condone._

_"And so, ladies and gentlemen, we reached the final solution," an entire nation held its breath as the President delivered this line. Every single person, from the criminals to the victims, wanted to know what possible punishment could be so bad that the Congress believed it could eradicate the country's crime for eternity. The criminals were scornful, the victims curious, but in the end, they were all the same: terrified._

_"Once a year from this point onwards, one child from each state of America will be taken to compete in an event, a Game, if you will, to show you what will happen if you do not remain peaceful. Until there are no crimes in the United States, fifty children will fight to the death in an arena every year. Only one of them will survive, and 49 will die because of your choices to instigate violence and crime in your country. There are no second chances, no mercy, unless you choose to be at peace for the sake of your children and this nation. Good night."_

_The entire country was in silence after this announcement. Looking at their calendars, hoping to see the date '1st April,' but none of them did._

_This wasn't a joke.  
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Somehow, I was chosen as the one to organise these events, to build an arena for children to fight to the death in, and to organise the military drones that made sure every television in the country could show the deaths of their children.

Although I know that it is for our country, to protect the people from themselves, there's still something that feels wrong about sending kids as young as twelve to fight against eighteen year olds - basically adults - in an arena. I even have two daughters, an eleven year old and a six year old. Too young to be picked, but old enough for me to know the barbarism that killing them would entail.

Only five children have come back from the arena, and I will never forget their names even if they finally stop the Games.

Ash Lee

Ryder Fletcher

Jared Klerk

Rose Eveleth

Lulu St. Clare

If I thought that it would get easier after five years, I was wrong.

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><p><strong>WE HAVE ALL OUR TRIBUTES. CELEBRATION TIME!<strong>

**ANYWAY. THIS LIST WILL REAPPEAR LATER. FILLED. BUT FOR NOW WE LEAVE YOU IN SUSPENSE.**


	2. The Freak Show

_Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.__ – Albert Einstein_

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><p><strong>Lulu St. Clare<strong>

****Aged 17

_Victor of the First Games._

There are some cruel things in this world. Cruel, evil, horrid things that some can't even begin to imagine.

And no. Its not the Bogeyman.

Some of these things can destroy your life. Scar your mind, never let you forget. They drive you towards the unmentionable. They make you lose sight of who you are.

The Games are one of these things.

The Government say it's a solution. A way to… _make peace. _So deaths will be 'reduced.'

Ah, yes. Because sending forty-nine kids to die every year just solves _everything._

Sometimes, I sit back and wonder how it all came to be. Was a politician just sitting in his bathtub, suddenly crying out 'Eureka!' when it all came to him? Did he run in his bathrobe to the White House to share his _ingenious _plan? Were there disagreements? Were there debates? Or did everyone just up and decide that killing people to stop killing was how they were going to fight crime rates, no questions asked?

Do they care that over the past five years, 245 children have been taken from their families and killed? Does it bother them?

No. Of course it doesn't. Because in the same five years, crime rates have gone down drastically – everyone's too afraid that their children will be punished for their lawbreaking.

The day our President gave the speech announcing the beginning of the Games, everyone thought it was a joke.

They wished it was a joke.

I still hope it's a joke.

Because if it were? I wouldn't be part of this… this _freak show. _

They call us Victors. It's a fancy label. It makes us sound like we've won something… But really? We've lost everything.

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><p>Everyone was still in a state of shock when the First Games rolled around. They weren't used to the customs, the events, never knowing what was going to happen. Some even half-expected that this would all play out to be a joke after all, that it was all just 'special effects,' and that their children would come home safely.<p>

That, however, was not the case. And it was proven when a little twelve-year-old from Ohio came home in a wooden box, a dent in her skull from where the rock had hit her.

I remember her. She's there in my mind's eye, with her green eyes and blond pigtails, being lifted off her feet as an older boy pounded a stone into her head.

The drugs have taken all my memories. All but those of the Games. I remember everything in such detail – the rainforest that made up the arena. The gong that sounded the beginning of the Games. The looming horn that made the Cornucopia. The beautiful rainforest that was our battlefield. The heat in the day, the cold as the dark fell and the faces of each tribute in the sky at night.

I was but twelve years old. I was scared, young, missing the family I hold no memories of now. I didn't know how to survive. I didn't know anything about weaponry. I only knew how to hide.

The documentaries on the TV show me everything about my old life but I hold no true memories. The people on the screen are purely actors and actresses, payed to replay my life, forcing everyone to see what a Victor truly becomes. That no one really comes home from the Games. And that's true. When I left my hometown in – supposedly – Montana, I never came back.

I hid in the mountains and the trees for the three weeks that were my Games. I stole supplies. I snuck around. I outlasted the others.

I watched them all die.

All the drugs in the world will never rid me from the sound of a scream. They will never erase the sight of a mangled, rotting corpse. They will never take away the knowledge that you have ended the life of an innocent being.

And they will never end the sound of the applause, the trumpets blowing, and pain you feel year after year that all started when they called out: 'Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the winner of the world's very first Games – Luciana St. Clare!'

_Winner. Ha! I won nothing._

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><p>I thought it might end there. I thought I had endured enough pain, enough suffering, that any person would ever need for a lifetime. I thought it was all gone. Footage from my files taken of me after the Games shows me that I spent the rest of the year lying on my bed, staring off into space. Sometimes screaming. Sometimes crying. Sometimes attacking people who were once my family in fits of meaningless rage. They show me the footage a lot nowadays, or so they say, because I always seem to forget about it. And when I do see it? I think that the young girl is the most pathetic creature I've ever seen. I thought that this truly was the end for her, that it couldn't get much worse.<p>

But I know the rest of the story from there. And it definitely doesn't stop. Oh, no, it goes on forever. Never ending.

The dinner with the President is another one of my clear memories. I was feeling hollow and empty as I usually did, but the meeting was compulsory. My mother – faceless to me now – dressed me in a pretty purple dress with a white satin ribbon. I hated that dress. I hated _dresses. _I still do.

And the President? Well, he was hateful anyway. For inflicting this cruel fate upon the children of America. He certainly didn't look that part of a cruel man, with his bulbous figure, white head and laughing blue eyes. But there was a sense of false security in his smile, a hidden meaning in his words, and when he told me that not only would the Games continue but that I was to _mentor_ until the rest of my days. I would have to give tips, give skills and help out the tributes year after year until my death. No, I did not have to mentor all 50 – instead, family's of the tributes or people that supported them could _buy_ time slots and sessions with me for their children.

That night, I lost it. That was the day I became the person I am now – I picked up a cigarette. A bottle, a bag of pills. And I took whatever would take the pain away.

I wasn't even thirteen yet.

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><p>I tried to kill myself the day the second Games were announced. Of course, I'd tried before, but I suppose the President suspected this would happen, that depression would get the better of me. He had me constantly being watched by government officials. They'd take away the kitchen knife I'd try to slit my wrists with. They'd cut down the ropes I would twist around my neck. They'd come in with oxygen masks when I tried to suffocate myself.<p>

Why didn't they just let me die?

I used to ask myself the question day by day, even though I knew the answer all along. I just didn't want to face the brutal truth.

I was a martyr to the Games. I was a symbol that once your children were taken, they would never really, truly come back. It was the President's way of reminding the people what would happen to their children: die, or turn out like the famous Lulu St. Clare.

So they let me take my drugs. Let me take my anti-depressants. It was rather contradictory, really, that they were trying to put a halt to crime yet they allowed me access to illegal drugs. But the whole thing was contradictory anyway.

The day the second Games were announced, I knew about my mentoring job that was to come… and I decided to have one more try. I thought about overdosing. I figured that no one would notice – that the officials would just think '_Ah, just Lulu taking her pills again._'

But as soon as my eyes fluttered shut, they were onto me.

All I remember from that day was waking up in a white hospital room surrounded by nurses and doctors… and his face. His round, angry face, staring down at me like I was a trapped animal.

Because that's exactly what the President saw me as.

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><p>Nine stomach pumps and a hundred and twenty-three drugs later, I met Rose Eveleth. It was my second day of mentoring sessions and I'd been injecting God-knows-what into God-knows-where. The first day had been pure hell – telling scared kids how to survive in the wilderness, and I intended to drug myself out of it the rest of the way through.<p>

The day went by in a fuzz, which was good. Faces blurred, voices meshed, and I just felt unworried, disconnected from my senses.

That was until, of course, Rose walked through the door.

She was only fourteen – one year my senior – but the way she composed herself, the way she _looked_… she could have easily been seventeen. With her honey blond hair and blue-green eyes, a sharp needle of envy stabbed through my foggy haven. She had everything I had lost – Beauty. A family who loved her. Friends. Potential. A life.

Well. She didn't for much longer, anyway.

The second she laid those ocean-blue orbs on me, I could see the pity reflected in them, sharp and accusing. And I didn't blame her. I was nothing but a small, dark-haired child lying on the floor, glassy-eyed and empty. She looked at me just like everyone else did. And I treated her just like I did everyone else. Not purposely, of course. Her questions came out like the signal of a broken radio and I simply sat there, staring off into the middle-distance.

Footage from our session in Rose's files show that she had a tantrum, stamping her foot and clapping her hands in front of my expressionless face, but I don't remember living it, or much less or being there.

_Go figure. _

Every one of my tributes that year went into the arena unequipped. My sessions with them were meaningless wastes of time, for they had learned nothing but the _joys_ of being a Victor.

It was no secret either that the mentoring sessions were a bust. Everyone seemed to know and think it was a waste of money and time.

This, of course, did not go down well with the President. If he wanted to fund the Games, keep the people living in fear, he would need the cash. And mentoring sessions contributed to his plans. So if people didn't want to buy lessons with the useless Lulu St. Clare, then where would I get his money from?

So he punished me.

The day of the bloodbath saw another stomach pump to rid my body of the drugs. The second I was clear, clean and sober, everything came rushing back. Screams. Blood. Guts. Betrayal. Words. Footsteps. _Terror._

I yelled out. Begged for drugs, morphine, alcohol, anything. Just crying out for something to get the horrible memories from my brain.

They didn't give me anything. No. Instead, they carted me, sobbing and screaming, to the Capitolite House.

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><p>The Capitolite House is hardly a house, more of an endless skyscraper, all metal and windows. It lies in the centre of a small city in Colorado otherwise known as the Capitol, built solely for the purpose of the Games. The board of the Games, the managers, the publicists, the stylists, the designers, the government… All those who have ties to the Games reside in the Capitol.<p>

The kids included.

The Capitolite House is a sort of homing for the tributes in the pre-Games preparations. They are permitted three days of weapon training in the basement of the building. They are interviewed on national television in the stadium beside it.

It's where most will spend their final days.

Mentors too are to live in the Capitolite House during the Games in our own quarters – but we are not to permanently live there. Why would we, anyway? We're rich, millionaires from winning. We could live anywhere we wanted as long as we don't leave the country – not that we could, anyway. You won't find a single airport in the United States.

The thing is… The Capitolite House is the only home I've known: memories of the little shack in Yellowstone Park that I supposedly lived in do not exist in my mind. They're gone. And while I hate the Capitolite House, I don't have anywhere else. Whenever the Games are not in session or being planned… well, I don't even know about half the things I do. I assume I drift from motel to motel until the Games come around and either Jared or Ryder come and find me.

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><p>I think that I was already close to passing out by the time they'd locked me into a room with nothing but a television set and two government officials. My tattered clothes were soaked in vomit, my eyes wide with terror, and everything so horribly clear and real. The screams I'd heard from my own Games bounced around my head, visions of the blood and gore, and a soft, motherly voice in the background I couldn't put a name or face to.<p>

The officials did nothing. Sure, they looked sympathetic to me, a child, rocking on the floor as she screamed in fright of her memories, so poignantly real and clear before her. They even looked regretful as someone over their radios ordered them to hold me in front of the television set.

"Hold still," one told me – the kinder of the two – as his gloved hands gripped my waist, but I writhed and kicked, trying to squirm and wriggle away from the horrible sight before me on the screen.

Children I had spoken to only mere hours before dropped to the ground, dead, their lives bleeding out of them. Many of still alive had already begun to lose their minds, only a few seconds into the Games, running around in fear or anger or bloodlust.

I gaped at the screen, half expecting to see a young girl with dark hair running for the mountains to hide.

But, no. No matter how similar they were, they weren't my Games. Even though I felt the same horror as I did then.

That year, Rose came out on top. That fact became quite clear as soon as the gong sounded, when she ran to a looming hunk of meat, whispering words in his ear that convinced him to protect her for the next few days – until she slit his throat in the dead of night.

Rose Eveleth was manipulative. I hadn't seen that when I met her. She befriended all the girl tributes, seduced all the males. And then she would kill them in the dead of night, slicing open their necks into horrible, bloody smiles.

Even when it came down to her and a beastly southern boy who had lost his mind in the early days, she still obviously had the crown in the bag. Despite the fact her seduction tricks didn't work, or that he tried to inch down her pants and rape her… It was clear she had something up her sleeve. So when she broke his neck in the struggle, no one was particularly surprised that the blonde-haired beauty wore the badge of a Victor.

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><p>To say that Rose and I did not get along would be the understatement of the century. While I was glad to have another mentor by my side, to have some weight lifted from my shoulders, Rose always made me feel like scum from her snarky comments to the way she'd cut me down with her eyes.<p>

Not that it really mattered. After all her interviews after the Games, she moved out of the Capitolite House before she got kicked out and bought a place up in her home state of California. I just kept drifting around absentmindedly, and before I knew it, I wound up back in that dreaded room with that dreaded girl and a whole new line of kids to be slaughtered.

The mentor sessions drifted away as hazily and foggily as last year. When it became clear that Rose would just brush off the girls and make out with the boys, not mentor them, everything just fell into routine again. Me, sitting there and doing whatever crazy thing the drugs drove me to, and Rose, either telling some poor young girl to piss off or groping a teenage boy.

Jared Klerk was eighteen at the time. When I met him, all he was to me was a fuzzy silhouette: a dark figure with huge arms and a deep, husky voice that was on the couch with fifteen-year-old Rose within seconds. Not that I remember any of that, but footage from Jared's file shows his mentor session. It looks like I was high on meth that day, because the video shows me sitting in the corner with a freakish smile on my face as I stared at a dot on the wall, having random spasms of movement every now and then.

There's a cloudy memory of me when I was watching the tributes training. My drug supply was low so I'd been wandering around with a bottle of vodka all day, which is probably why I can remember bits and parts of that day.

Most kids didn't really train. They had no experience, so what was the point? To learn to shoot an arrow, you'd need years of experience. To fence, you needed the build and the balance. To know edible foods, you needed to have had it drilled in your brain for a long time.

Jared had been standing in the middle of the room, talking to two other boys – one younger and one about his age. By his tense shoulders and clenched fists, I had guessed it wasn't a particularly friendly conversation – especially when Jared's knuckles connected with the younger boy's jaw.

He was quick-tempered, that Jared, with a certain dislike for city kids. That explained a lot – the two boys he was talking to were from Miami and the other from Boston.

There's a dead end for me after that first punch. All that's left of that are snippets: a bloodied nose, an all-out brawl, one of them being pinned to the floor.

But the strongest memory of that day is of Jared, standing up, position tense and ready to fight as his head whipped around and his eyes connected with mine.

I don't even know if he remembers that, or if it ever really happened. But in that moment, I saw the confident, cocky farm boy for what he was – scared. Shocked. Frightened. Just like everyone else in that room.

But after that, all there is for me is darkness.

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><p>When the third Games rolled around, they took away my drugs but spared me (minimal) alcohol. Once again, I was trapped in a room, forced in front of the television set, yet this time around it was Rose that needed to be held there. No, she wasn't writhing and squirming and screaming, but her eyes were haunted as the gong sounded, shiny with tears and fright. I was having difficulties myself: the memories were still hazy, but they were clearer, and there was the distinct ringing of a cry in my ear of a little boy that was dissected in my own Games.<p>

But it was easier than the previous year. Even Rose at some point decided she needed comforting and wrapped her arms around me, clinging to my smaller, hollow body.

That time around, I tried to focus on watching one particular tribute. It was an older girl – Kathleen was her name – with black plaits and big green eyes. I chose her because… well I don't even know. I don't even think I had a mentor session with her. Maybe it was because she took in all the younger kids? Saved them? Tried to feed them?

Died for them?

Maybe. Possibly. I'm not sure. She didn't make it that far, anyway.

I'll tell you who did go far. Jared. That moment in the training centre changed him, because when the gong sounded, he charged at the two city boys in a rage and snapped both their necks with his bare hands.

That's how he went about the whole Games. He'd hunt down the kids who pissed him off, setting traps with ropes and running around with his knives, throwing tantrums whenever he couldn't get to someone. A younger girl, hanging upside-down in a tree too far away, taunting him. A black-skinned boy from Wisconsin with an axe waving in his face.

I guess that it eventually went to his head like it did for me, because even when they crowned him winner, he came back a changed man. Black spots of anger and rage formed within him, causing him to lose it over the silliest things. At his Victory dinner, he almost punched Rose's lights out because she took the last chicken wing. Not that that turned her off of him, though. Rose was thrilled to have a male Victor as part of our… 'group.' She fawned over him, chasing him like a lost puppy and throwing herself all over him every chance she could, and hey, he loved the adoration, but he didn't respect her in the slightest, sometimes struck her or shouted at her.

Jared and I never really had much of a connection. I got along much better with him than I did Rose – he was kinder, funnier and… Well, he respected me. And nobody ever did. But we had nothing in common, nothing really to talk about. Sometimes he sought me out if he was looking for a drunk night out, but that didn't occur too often until later years: who would want to be hauling around a fourteen-year-old druggie?

The only trait we did share was that we were both homeless: staying in the Capitolite House as long as we could, camping out at bars, drifting through Bed & Breakfast hotels… But Jared sometimes drove back down to his farm to visit his family. Sometimes. It was rare, and barely ever happened, but he'd occasionally drop in. A couple of times, he even let me crash on his couch.

I remember it was comfy.

Yet, despite the fact that I may have preferred Jared over Rose, I still felt distant from the other Victors.

That was, of course, until Ryder Fletcher joined our little freak show.

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><p>A California-born jock with a tan that even Rose envied, when Ryder walked through the door to his mentor session acting like he owned the world, I was sobering up fast. Firstly, because some idiotic thirteen-year-old rich kid thought it would be a good idea to steal my supply the previous day. Secondly, because when Ryder arrived, Rose pinched me so hard that if she did the same to a corpse it would bring them back to life. And thirdly? Ryder Fletcher was – quoting Rose – a 'sex-god.'<p>

Too bad he didn't have the personality to match.

He encouraged Rose with cheesy pick-up lines. He got into constant fights with Jared for calling him 'a hick.'

And me?

I don't remember. Most memories of Ryder before the Games are blurred like everything else… more or less. There's a pitying look, a witty comment, a sympathetic smile and a brush of the shoulders, but pre-Games Ryder is just like every other tribute – a foggy mist of voices with no faces, of people with no names.

I had no connection or attachment I can recall of to Ryder Fletcher to begin with.

* * *

><p>The Fourth Games was routine by then – for me and Rose, anyway. I sat with my legs crossed on the sofa, glassy-eyed and drugged-up, while Rose combed her hair absentmindedly, getting ready for the horror all over again.<p>

Jared was another matter.

Being his first year of mentoring and watching the Games, those spots of anger decided to make a reappearance. He completely lost it – thrashing and growling and fighting the officials. Snippets of that fight are there in my mind's eyes – Jared, yelling and trying to escape, to get out, while the officials pinned him to the ground regretfully, holding him in front of the screen like a trapped animal.

He settled down eventually. Well, not really. He just stopped writhing and punching, but they had to tie him to one of the other couches so he wouldn't either go rabid or run away.

Rose flinched when the gong sounded, and Jared had started to make this awful howling noise, starting to cuss when the first cannon went off, muttering death threats and the likes.

By the time the second day of the Games rolled around, us Victors were more or less under control, thanks to my genius plan: sharing the small container of anti-depressants I had been allowed.

Ryder Fletcher, however, was slowly losing his mind.

Ryder had had a lot of screen time from the beginning when he nicked a knife and got an ally at the Cornucopia. He got even more time when he got bitten by a snake and started to get… delusional. The fuzzy memory of the arrogant jock was quickly replaced by a clearer one, one of Ryder going mad from poison and dehydration. He attacked his ally, killing him, but it earned him a dagger lodged inside his shoulder that he was frightened to pull out. It was a surprise to everyone when the mad boy got another ally but he killed her too, convinced that she was trying to poison his food. He killed five people, all in all, but it seemed he invented others. About halfway through, he started muttering for 'Arthur' to be quiet, that he didn't like 'how Arthur liked to kill people,' or 'Bad Arthur.' When he overpowered a blonde-haired girl who'd been running around on her toned-legs the whole Games, the crown was placed atop his crazy, messed-up head.

He was hospitalized for a whole month.

* * *

><p>His file is probably the thickest of all of us. Videos, medical records, legal documents, therapists he's been to, information on the multiples mental disorders he has. There's footage I've seen from when he got out of the arena: eyes wild, bleeding, wounds everywhere with nothing but skin-and-bones, screaming bloody murder, talking to people who weren't there. Shrinks were hired, psychologists, and there's a tape of every session. It's interesting to watch: his first session was spent running around, begging Arthur to hush up. The second was used up by explaining Ryder's mental state, what psychosis he possessed and such. And slowly, he began to pull himself together.<p>

Ryder Fletcher is a disaster of a man. He has a schizophrenic voice in his head that he calls Arthur that likes to kill things. He has an alter-ego called Steve who is cold, logical and unfeeling. He has ADHD. He has PTSD. He is paranoid. He hallucinates. He has random attacks of cheerfulness. And sometimes, he's like the cocky jock he was before the Games.

And despite all this, he's my best friend.

* * *

><p>I didn't meet the new Ryder until the fifth Games arrived. The past few months had been a blur, and the last clear memory I had was watching Ryder win the Games – and that had been nearly a year ago. I suspect that I must've been camping out in bars and motels, and I must've been arrested at some point because I remember finding a scrunched up contract that showed I paid some sort of fine for drunk and underage driving as well as vandalism, but, surprise surprise, I don't recall any of it.<p>

What I _do_ recall, however, is sitting on a bar stool begging for a drink. I'd completely forgotten the number I had to call for supplies, and there weren't any dealers on the street anymore.

Things were getting clearer, easier to see and make out, and the hovering face of a blood-covered boy drifted before my eyes.

He, however, was replaced by another boy. A taller, handsomer boy with bright blue eyes and bronzed hair and muscles any bodybuilder would kill for – his only flaw being a snakebite above his eyebrows and a knife wound visible through his singlet.

I had blinked at him. Once. Twice. His face was familiar, locked away somewhere in my brain, but I couldn't put a name to him. All I did know was that the arrogant smile was gone, the cocky set of the shoulders.

"Lulu," he had greeted me with a lopsided smile. "Long time, no see."

"Do I know you?"

"Its me. Ryder Fletcher? You don't remember me? What? Why? Am I that forgettable?" he had thrown questions at me, eyes going from friendly to wild in a matter of seconds as he cracked. "Nobody loves me. Nobody cares. You forgot my name. I should've just died in the Games."

The word 'Games,' snapped me back.

_Ryder. Ryder Fletcher. ADHD. PTSD. Schizo. Demented. Paranoid. _

I don't remember much of what happened next. A few uttered words of greeting, but as soon as he pressed a cigarette into my hand, everything just fell away after that. All that's left is a yell, a question, a crazy glint in a pair of blue eyes, a leather-seated car and a pair of hands that held my shoulders in a way that was so safe and so secure that it almost made me feel like I was _home._

* * *

><p>Ash Lee was the first Victor who didn't get a mentoring session. Her African-American family couldn't afford the ridiculous price of having a one-on-one chat with the freak show that made up the Victors. Not that is would have benefited her, anyway. I was no help, always doing some weird thing the drugs would cause me to do. On crack? I'd be talking non-stop about unicorns. On ectasy? I'd probably be all over the tributes. On cocaine? I'd have odd flashes of happiness before turning grouchy and aggressive. Anti-depressants? Blank and mopey. The ever-changing Lulu St. Clare was no help to any tribute.<p>

Not that the others were any better. Rose, if she wasn't performing a striptease for Jared or trying hopelessly to hit on Ryder while he was in a (relatively) normal mood, would simply seduce the boys and _tell_ the girls to seduce the boys.

Jared was probably the most helpful, I suppose, seeing as he was also the most sane, that it made sense: how to react in the Cornucopia, how long to stay with allies – he helped the kids like we never could. Well, he'd help out _country_ kids. He'd pick a fight with the city kids.

Ryder was pretty much the same as me: ever-changing and unpredictable. Some days, he'd be walking around with a bloodthirsty look in his eye, preoccupied with talking to the little Arthur-voice in this head. Other times, he'd be hyperactive and annoyingly bright, in your face and wanting to be friends with everyone. At some point, he would turn into Steve and go through army and ambush tactics that barely made any sense whatsoever. Most tributes just gave up on talking to Ryder, so the two of us would be thrown together. A lot.

Of course, many of my memories of him are distant. But they're there – laughing as he snorted beer out his nose, locked in an intense thumbwar, debating with Steve on why anti-depressants actually do work, him finding me in the gutter outside a stranger's apartment. We were sixteen and eighteen and our lives were a wreck, but he brought me sanity. Even though we were both insane.

Everything's a bloody contradiction.

* * *

><p>When the gong for the fifth Games sounded, us Victors were having some… technical difficulties.<p>

Three guesses as to why.

I'd been furiously injecting caffeine into my system ever since they took away my stash. So I was basically bouncing off the ceiling. Rose's hairdryer had broke and she was still having a tantrum because her hair was going frizzy. Jared had smoke coming out his ears because of the most problematic Victor that day. You guessed it – Ryder.

While we had (more or less) allowed ourselves to be escorted calmly into the room, Ryder came in in a straitjacket, thrashing around and screaming at the top of his lungs.

"They're coming to kill me! They're coming to kill me! Must kill them before they kill me. Kill. Kill. Kill. No. Ahhhh!"

Havoc ensued. Somehow, he managed to rip apart the straitjacket with his teeth before lashing out, scratching at the door like a deranged cat, sobbing and screaming while Jared and the officials tried to get him under control.

Jared and Ryder rolling around on the floor throwing punches ensued.

At some point, more officials came running in, and I suppose they got the situation under control. If you count Ryder being fitted into three straitjackets and being chained to a chair as 'under control.' Then they had to shove Rose's shirt – which she happily gave up – into his mouth as the gong sounded to stop him from making the horrible wailing sound that escaped his lips.

I recall spending most of those Games by his side, trying to calm him down. Sometimes, he'd relax under my touch, but after a few moments he'd go ballistic again, eyes trained on the screen and wide with horror.

When I was focused on the TV screen, it was mainly centred around a little dark thirteen-year-old who'd managed to get a pair of army knives from the Cornucopia, hiding in the shadows and killing people when their backs were turned. For one so small and innocent, she was one of the most lethal contenders in the Games.

In the end, it came down to three: An avid swimmer from Michigan, a cadet girl and Ash. Ash was clever – she allowed herself to slip into the shadows, watching and waiting, and when the other two found each other, Ash was watching them, waiting for it all to end. And it did, eventually: the cadet girl, while she was busy bludgeoning the boy long after she was dead, didn't really notice the small girl sneaking up behind her until she had a knife sticking out of her back.

Ash was crowed Victor last year. And even she lost her mind.

* * *

><p>Recent footage of Ash being plucked from the arena after she won shows her completely glassy-eyed, numb and indifferent. Things went downhill from there.<p>

At first, they thought that Ash would be – like Rose – one of the only Victors that didn't need therapy and hospitalization.

Oh, how wrong they were.

Sent back to the Capitolite House and given her own quarters, Ash was being prepped up for her interviews. We welcomed her back warmly – or, at least, I tried to and Ryder did as well. Jared and Rose more or less ignored her. Yet… even when he showed her her room and gave her a proper tour of all the Victor functions, she seemed to jump every time we spoke. She'd cover her ears randomly and shake her head when we tapped her on the shoulder. So when she ran half way across a room to cower in a corner when Jared flicked her over the forehead because she wasn't paying attention, a shrink was hired, and Rose remained the only sane Victor.

* * *

><p>While interviews were post-poned and psychologists hired, files and news and documents of Ash's mental state were sent back to the Capitolite House. Ryder and I, being the curious things that we are, decided to have a little peek into the mail.<p>

Ash had been diagnosed with severe panphobia – fear of everything.

I haven't seen Ash since. Not that is really mattered – I didn't care much for her. It was only when I was on crack or ice and feeling unusually happy that I'd feel like giving her a snuggle, or something similar. But she'd always run away screaming, convinced I was going to attack her.

* * *

><p>But now… it's time for the sixth Games. The gore, the horror, the blood… it's all starting again.<p>

Us Victors came back to the Capitolite House about a month ago, same as always. Rose had come back from a week of partying at her mansion in California. Jared drove up in his truck from visiting his ranch. Even Ash showed up – her parents dropped her off.

Ryder and I also made quite the entrance: he'd found me at some motel, broken down and unconscious from a crack overdose. Because he's such a _genius_ (not) he decided to take me to a water park instead of the hospital – but that's where we ended up, surprise surprise, for yet another stomach pump for me and a fine we had to pay for breaking the water slide.

How we broke it?

I don't remember.

What I did remember, however, was the fact that I had the Victor Party.

Not so much a party but more of a… pre-Games dinner, I suppose you could say. The last day of (relative) sanity we had before another month or two of horror and death. Its not really optional, either. It's the day the officials draw out all the drugs and alcohol from your body for the following day: for the Games. Its the day we watch the reapings. The day we watch the videos of children being stolen from their homes, their lives.

It's a ritual, I suppose, a tradition.

And its tonight.

Party time.

_Not. _

* * *

><p><strong>Apologies for the late chapter. The original author who was to write it experienced some personal issues, and the chapter wasn't taken over until last week.<strong>

**Lulu, Ryder, Taryn, Ash and Maddie  
><strong>


	3. Masquerade

****_Boldness is a mask for fear, however great - John Dryden_

* * *

><p><strong>Rose Eveleth<strong>

Aged 18

_Victor of the Second Games_

* * *

><p>Has anyone ever told you how hard it is to force food down your throat when you just want to choke and cough it all up? That's about how it feels right now. Just knowing that tomorrow all those kids are going to come in, all 50 of them. Isn't it bad enough that we've had to kill, to cut open other innocents just to survive?<p>

Apparently not. We must prepare others for the same fate. All you can do is distance yourself and close your eyes and pretend like none of it's real.

* * *

><p>They say I'm the sanest of the Victors. I mean, come on. I'm hot, I've got the body, I work it. I mean yeah, all the sly flirtations and whispered insinuations are fun and all…but I think the reason I've still got my sanity <em>mainly<em> intact is because I cut myself off before it was too late. I never let myself grow close. I live in my own little world where everything's picture-perfect and although I'm empty, it doesn't matter. Why be an actual person when you can just be a pretty face?

The first Games were the worst. I wasn't sure what to feel at that time. I was thirteen but I was…disconnected. You see these things on the television and they don't seem real, they're not because they don't affect you. I watched the most gruesome deaths but to me, it was all surreal.

I watched as Luciana St. Clare, a tiny thing of twelve, was proclaimed the Victor of the First Games. She hid, she stole supplies, she was what they never saw coming. But by that stage, she was already too far gone that she wasn't the same girl they'd shoved into the arena. Of course, watching it, all I saw was a wide-eyed, dark-haired frightened child. It still didn't seem _real_ to me.

* * *

><p>Then it was my turn. How I got there is still a blur, but I remember once I'd forced down the panic, I knew exactly what tactic to play. I was fourteen then but I could easily have passed for several years older. I had the curvy body of a girl in her late teens and I already knew that I was stunning.<p>

Confidence about my good looks quickly morphed into arrogance. Perhaps they thought I was going to be like the pretty girl in the horror movies, the one who panicked and ran away only to have her face slashed open. Not me. My pride and my beauty would be my victory.

That was when I first met Lulu St. Clare. Try as I might, I could feel nothing for her but pity and irritation. She hardly spoke. I soon found out about the drugs she pumped through her system to keep her from feeling. That was when the disdain kicked in, and when I knew that I would never have anything in common with Lulu. I tried to get through to her but I was met with a silent wall every time, a dead end.

Then the Games began. I had nothing but a small knife I managed to scavenge at the very beginning. I watched them all die around me. I heard their screams, smelt their blood on the wind. And I panicked. I knew I didn't want that to happen to me. So I cut myself off from everything I knew and stuck to my plan.

I used my natural charm to my advantage. I befriended the girls; I made them feel special, like they were part of some kind of secret. I flirted with the boys, a subtle wink, a sly suggestion here and there. Basically I was a coward. I knew I wasn't strong enough to stick them with my knife during the day so while they slept in the night, I carved open their throats and left them to bleed.

I know. I probably seem like a heartless killer and perhaps I am. But my heart was still slamming painfully in my chest when I bloodied them. I didn't want death. All I wanted to do was survive and I knew that I didn't stand a chance against some of the muscular boys and athletic girls. So night became my only ally…there were no screams. Everything was done in complete silence. They could almost have been sleeping forever.

But not everyone killed like I did. I remember watching a boy, perhaps my age, have his head smashed open by a rock. I remember a girl – she was so young, so small – having her throat crushed. Some of the deaths were…horrific. I wanted to lose myself and screams until my vocal chords tore to shreds. Instead, I became cold. I focused.

It was my last opponent that broke me. He was a hulking southern boy, driven mad just after the bloodbath. He must have been…seventeen, eighteen? I tried my best to seduce him but my efforts were doomed to fail. He forced me down to the ground and started to rip my clothes off.

I could have closed my eyes and let myself drift into oblivion... but that wasn't me. I had come this far and I wasn't willing to give up. So despite his heavy weight pressed down on me and the fact that he'd been trying to push down my pants, I flailed and, in a panic, somehow managed to snap his neck. And as I rolled his body off me, pulled my clothes on and myself together, struggling not to cry or throw up, I became the Victor of the Second Games.

They all saw me as a little whore, a seductive minx who had nearly got her own back. I bet a lot of them were disappointed that I had won, or that the southern boy hadn't managed to rape me. They wanted a slut? Fine. I wasn't Rose Eveleth who had come with a plan to seduce. I was completely the flirt they wanted me to be. Who would ever want someone who had tried to seduce boys on live television? No matter what I did, I would always be the whore. So I condemned myself to it.

I think that's why the other Victors hate me so much. I have at least the semblance of normality going on. I hide so well the shattered girl behind the mask that the mask has become fixed to me, and I can't take it off. Inside, something inside keeps screaming and screaming for what can never be. I want to return to the way I was. But the screams remain silent. I won't let them out. Someone has to b e sane.

* * *

><p>I was barely fifteen when the Third Games rolled around. By that stage, I had taken the girl I had once been and drowned her in the cemented reputation of being a flirt. Jared Klerk…I remember him vividly. He was eighteen at the time, but I was instantly all over him, and all of the rest of the boys who were remotely good-looking.<p>

Why? Who knows? It was like by that time, I'd lost the ability to feel anything. Lulu needed her drugs for all of that, but not me. I was cold without even trying.

Jared was always hot-headed. He was a total country hick and immediately got around to fighting the city kids. I'd see his fists clenching and unclenching, and then I'd just know instinctively that someone was about to get punched. I was hitting on him even before the Games started, but somehow I knew. I knew he would win.

He cared nothing for me, of course. Jared would smirk at the attention. He'd get possessive when any other guy came near me. But he didn't care. I knew that I was nothing to him, that he had as little respect for me as most other people have for dirt. Of course, by that stage, I was beyond what anyone thought of me.

The only person I could rely on was myself. The Games had taught me that lesson and I had learned well. While Jared and Lulu started their little freak show like we could all be friends and live happily ever after, I was dealing with the hard reality. I hid too. I just hid so well that no one could possibly find me when I did.

When the Games started, I felt like I couldn't breathe. I was watching all over again what happened to me. The first deaths had me clutching at Lulu's small frame and trying to ignore the silent tears that streamed down my cheeks. Of course, Lulu was drugged out of her mind. At least she wasn't high that day, or else I'd have felt the need to slap some sense into her. I curled in on myself, watching the horrors of the Games unfold, and it wasn't just a television show any longer. This was my nightmare.

* * *

><p>When Jared won, he wasn't like Lulu and I at first. He was happy with the fame and the fortune and the empty title of Victor. I fawned over him as usual but I soon learned that, even out of the arena, Jared couldn't control his anger. On his nineteenth birthday, I had the last slice of strawberry cheesecake. He confronted me about it and beat me black and blue. I think that was the only time I lost control, showed any weakness.<p>

I still remember pushing myself up off the kitchen floor, every time to be met with his fist. But everyone just watched in stony silence. They could have been statues. Jared probably could have killed me and still, the cold silence wouldn't have been broken. I had never wanted to scream as much as I did then, if only to shatter the quiet.

* * *

><p>I was sixteen when the Fourth Games crept up on me. I have to admit that I overlooked Ryder Fletcher. Sure, he was gorgeous, a total sex god…but I thought a pretty face like that couldn't win. Yes, me of all people, who had won precisely using the advantages of my pretty face. Perhaps it was the fact that Ryder quickly became completely and utterly insane.<p>

I thought Lulu was bad, with her swings from screaming fits, to total highs, to sullen silence. That was before I met Ryder. He was completely psychotic, with alter-egos, hallucinations…you name it, he had it. It scared me to watch him lose his cool because, unlike Lulu, it wasn't any kind of drugs causing this sort of mania. He was paranoid pretty much from the word go and then through the entire Games, killing anyone who he came across or else sleeping the rest of the time after he was poisoned by a snake bite.

This time around, when the gong sounded, I could handle it. It was still a terrible thing to witness but the wounds I'd sustained from my own Games were starting to heal. The scars would never fade, but I could bear them. It was Jared this time around who started to freak out, howling and shouting out death threats. I tried to calm him down once but he punched me so hard there was a bruise on my cheekbone for two weeks. Needless to say, I didn't try a second time.

* * *

><p>So there we were by the Fifth Games last year: a drug addict, a psycho, a walking madhouse…and me. We were all a mess. Lulu and Ryder were in their own little world of insanity, and I welcomed them to it. They were in isolation mode. Even when the kids came in for us to mentor them – and what were we supposed to tell them? To embrace their imminent deaths? – Ryder and Lulu were off doing their own thing. I suppose that's crazy-people love for you.<p>

Jared was actually good with the kids. The country ones, that was. He was willing to help them out, tell them what to do. I just bluntly told the girls to follow my lead. Not that it would get them anywhere. Some attractive brunette had tried my tactic in the Fourth Games and had been immediately decapitated. Maybe it only works once, or maybe only if you're Rose Eveleth.

Of course, I just did my usual. Slept with Jared a couple of times, some other people, flirted with the boys, went downtown and tried to club the Games out of my system. Not that you really can. It's stuck with you. No matter where you go or what you do, it's always there, and it haunts you.

That year's Victor was a little African-American girl called Ash Lee. She became afraid of _everything_. A tiny spider in the corner would send her screaming out of the room. It might have been funny if it wasn't actually so serious. She stayed away from me, from the freak show. They think I'm the only sane one, just because I don't need treatment. Maybe I am sane. I don't know what I am anymore.

* * *

><p>Then there's the Victor Party. I still remember it from last year, before we had tiny Ash running around cowering if we so much as raised a hand. Lulu was completely high, singing something that I don't think was even in English. She later went into a shouting fit, thumping her fists on the table, before vomiting all over her pretty green Gucci dress. What a shame. The dress would have cost a lot of money.<p>

Ryder went into schizophrenic mode and crawled under the table, rocking to himself. Jared drank way too much beer and became volatile, smashing several glasses. I just sat through the whole thing, making flirtatious conversations with the inebriated Jared and completely ignoring Lulu. Completely ignoring the reality of what was to come, I suppose.

This year I'm wearing a slinky, spangled aqua dress that brings out my eyes and shows off my figure. That's not to mention the three-inch heels that totally complete the outfit. Once I'm down priming my eyes with some charcoal-coloured mascara and electric blue eyeliner, I saunter downstairs to the dining room to where everyone is already waiting. Of course, I have to appear fashionably late.

"Sorry," I smile dazzlingly as I enter the room, clicking over to sit beside Jared. "I had to fix up my hair, it was a mess."

In reality, I was preparing for a night that's bound to be a mess, just like the rest of our lives. Not that the President or the freak show or anyone else actually cares. Jared's eyes devour my figure before he turns his attention on the beef tortillas in front of him. Across the table, Ash is shaking hard, her eyes round with fear as she observes the huge bread knife in the middle of the table.

I roll my eyes and glance across at Ryder who is picking at his food with a stony face. I decide to go for a reaction and reach out to place my hand on top of his. He immediately goes into Steve mode, his eyes becoming cold and hard as he withdraws his hand quickly from my reach. Lulu is mildly content tonight, watching me with a dazed expression on her face.

"What's the matter, Ryder?" Jared mocks, taking another sip of his half-finished beer, "I thought it was Ash who was scared of everything."

Ryder glares and I swear I hear him growl, his eyes darting towards Lulu's fork since he has only been given a rubber baby spoon. I withdraw my hand, instead placing it on Jared's leg. As usual, he's completely comfortable with my advances, chewing happily at a carrot stick as I tap my fingers on his thigh. Lulu reaches across for a chicken drumstick, making Ash nearly jump out of her skin. Mad, honestly, the lot of them.

No one speaks. The place is silent as a graveyard, although I'd say a funeral would be more cheerful. I lean over, giving Ryder a good view down the front of my dress, which of course he doesn't appreciate, and go to offer Ash a hunk of bread, but she flinches away from me. I sigh heavily and sit back down, resuming my finger-tapping on Jared's leg.

Lulu chooses this moment to reach across the table and take the last carrot stick, the china bowl clinking as she withdraws her hand from this. Jared snaps to attention, lunging across and grabbing Lulu's wrist, twisting until she's forced to drop the carrot stick on the glass table. Jared's expression is one of fury.

"That was the last carrot stick!"

Jared isn't normally aggressive with Lulu. Okay, he's aggressive with everyone, but they normally tend to get along. I guess the stress of the Sixth Games must be creeping up on him. He doesn't have the chance to do or say anything else, because Ryder snarls and lunges across the table at him, smashing glasses and plates as he tackles him to the floor.

That's when the fists start flying. Ryder and Jared roll around in a flurry of violence, while everyone up at the table keeps eating like this is a normal event. Animals, that's what we are. Wild animals, and they're trying to keep us tamed, but it won't work. Cages and leashes might, but we'll never be who we once were.

Normally at this time I take my cue to leave, but instead of sauntering from the room, I click over and deliver a swift kick to Jared's ribs with my heels, knocking him off Ryder. He's stunned for a moment, before he comes at me with a roar, slamming me against the wall. I flinch as he slaps me, before I try and talk some sense into him.

"Jared…babe, let's just go get you cleaned up, okay? There's glass all over you."

I wrinkle my nose at his ruined suit, brushing the glass off his shirt. There are cuts all over his face and arms. Jared is breathing heavily, but the anger starts to fade from his eyes. Not because of me. He doesn't care about me enough for that. He growls and tugs away from me, but consents to be lead out of the room. I spare one last glance into the room to see Lulu helping Ryder up from the ground.

Maybe Jared will be up for a striptease, maybe something even more. All I know is that I need to drown myself, and I don't mean in the sense of a bubble bath.

* * *

><p><strong>Maddie, Lulu, Ryder, Ashlee and Taryn<strong>


	4. Fight or Flight

_The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear- _H. P. Lovecraft__

* * *

><p><strong>Ash Lee<strong>

Aged 13

_Victor of the Fifth Games_

* * *

><p>Fight or flight?<p>

It's a question I always end up asking myself. . . Do I stand my ground and fight? Or do I run away as fast as my legs will take me and never look back?

I normally choose the latter. It's easier, it's neater and it's quicker.

But sometimes, no matter how fast you can run, or how good you can hide; the thing chasing you will catch up. And that's when you have to turn around, look it dead in the eye and do what you were trying to avoid... _fight._

* * *

><p>Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotion caused by something or someone that is dangerous, likely to cause pain- a threat.<p>

Spiders; a _real _fear. Spiders can cause pain, be dangerous and be a threat; therefore they are something that can be a possible fear.

Heights; also a real fear. There is a danger of falling from high places and dying; therefore they are fearful.

The same goes with things like fire, snakes and lightning. All of these can be dangerous and can- in certain circumstances- kill you.

So, things like _loud noises_ or _fast movements _cannot be classed as 'fears' because they are not potentially dangerous or a threat... or at least, that's what my psychiatrist tells me.

_Panphobia_. That's what the doctors said. Little Ash Lee, the tiny thirteen year old African American has been diagnosed with Panphobia caused by the increased prolonged stress of her time in the Arena of the 5th Games.

Scared of _everything. _That's what Panphobia is, to put it nice and simply.

I guess they're right though. I _am _scared- of everything. But it's not my fault everything is so terrifying... loud noises; they remind me of those cannons, those 49 cannons that signalled the death of those 49 kids. Fast movements; well what if that person waving their hands around like crazy has a knife? What if they are trying to kill me? _Anything_ can be lurking in the darkness of shadows and anyone could be standing just around the corner, wanting to kill me.

Being scared of everything is the only thing that makes sense to me anymore... I struggle to remember what it was like to not fear every tiny movement, how a bang didn't send me running, or someone stepping too close to me didn't make me scream.

* * *

><p>I was not always like this... I was not always a small scared little girl who everyone looked at as if she was a baby. I <em>used <em>to be bright, bubbly and confident. I used to be like everyone else... but of course, the Games change people. In ways nothing else can.

I still remember the day this eternal fear began to creep in. Reaping Day.

I'd seen the Reaping happen on TV. People in suits coming into schools or interrupting sporting matches to drag a certain kid into an eerie white van and driven to the Capitolite House. The men in suits come at any time of day and whisk the kids away with a military droid filming every second of it so it's broadcast to the entire nation, so everyone else has to suffer through the horror of the Reaping.

A super computer located in the heart of Colorado buzzes through the names of every girl boy in America. Every year the computer is brought out where it files through every name until it chooses a name at random. One girl from half the states of America and one boy from the other half, swapping around every year.

Last year was the first time the computer would be filing my name.

When I turned twelve it was the boy's year for Texas- I was safe. At the time it was a relief; knowing I was totally safe for one more year. Then the next year came around and I began to feel chills whenever the TV came on showing footage of the Games, I couldn't help but imagine myself having to be thrown into the arena like those dying kids.

I was in the kitchen when they came for me. It was starting to get dark and I was helping mother chop up potatoes to have for dinner. We were singing and laughing as we chopped- it was something we always did, my mother and I were quite close.

Then there was a short but deliberate knock on the door. I stopped mid-chop and my eyes shot to meet with my mum's. We never got visitors.

"Probably just the mail man," Mother said reassuringly, "I ordered a package the other day... it's due to arrive soon."

But her voice was already shaking with fear; it was _far _too late at night for the mail man to come.

My mother walked briskly out of the room and I tiptoed after her. I poked my head around the wall to watch her open the door.

The knife I was using to chop up the potatoes fell out of my hand and stuck in the floor when I saw who was standing at the door- two men, dressed in black and very official looking suits with blank hard expressions. Behind them was a strange mechanical robot on wheels with a camera craning over the two men, its lens pointed directly at me.

I'd seen it on TV before. The men, the droid. I knew that on the street a white van would be parked, waiting to have me thrown into it and whisk me off to my death.

A shiver ran across my whole body; I was turning around and running out the back door before my mother had even begun to plead with those men.

I remember hearing a loud thump, closely followed by the stomping of feet as those two men began to chase after me. I could even hear that droid buzzing as it followed, trying to capture my every move.

I ran into my backyard and squeezed myself through a hole in my back fence which led to the yard of my neighbour. I ran across their yard and into the next, then kept running and running, without looking back once.

I couldn't stop myself from running. Deep inside I knew that I would eventually have to stop and give myself over but at the time I shoved that thought deep down. I held onto the hope that if I ran far and fast enough, I would escape them and escape my death in the Games.

Too soon I began to tire. My legs began to feel like jelly, I struggled to get air into my lungs and my tongue was in desperate need of water. I began to search for somewhere to hide; somewhere where the droid or men or the van couldn't find me.

After a bit more running I found the place. Thick trees and bushes all clumped together on the side of a deserted road. I took a moment to glance around me to make sure I was alone before I crawled beneath the thorns and spikes of the bush and nestled myself comfortably within it.

I could see the road from my hide out and it wasn't too long before the white van began to slowly come into view. A suited man was in the driver's seat, scanning the side of the road thoroughly. I held my breath.

As if in slow motion the van drove past the bush I was concealed in. It stopped for a very brief moment directly in front of me before driving on.

I gave out a huge sigh of relief before I felt muscled arms encircle me and snap me up into the air.

All the kicking and screaming in the world wouldn't make the slightest impact on the hold that man had on me. I bit, scratched, clawed, kicked, yelled and fought as much as I could but the suited man carried me over to the van, threw me in, closed the door and then the van took off.

* * *

><p>A knock on the door pulls my mind back to the present. I jump in the air at the sound of it. I quickly make my way to the corner of the room where I curl up in a ball and put my hands over my ears. My heart pumps in my chest as I think about all the things that could be behind that door. . .<p>

"Ash," says a very motherly and gentle voice, "Ash, deary, is it okay if I come in?"

I shake my head at the door but it opens anyway.

Lisa -my caretaker- enters the room very slowly, careful not to make any sudden movement. She is the one that looks after me whenever I am in the Capitolite House, when I am at my worst. I'm not exactly terrified of her the way I am with some people but I'm not comfortable around her either. Let's face it- I'm not comfortable around anyone any more...

Lisa stays standing at the door when she speaks, "I have been sent to get you," she says quietly, "You are required in the TV room."

"W-w-why?" I ask in a stutter. I can't even string a proper sentence together any more...

"It's time for the Reaping," she says.

I begin to shake my head furiously. I am _not _going. I am _not _watching those reaping, never again.

"Darling, you have to go," Lisa says, "If you don't come in they will bring in the Officials. You don't want that to happen, do you?"

No. No I don't.

I can't stand Officials. In their black suits, armed to the teeth with guns, standing at every doorway and hall, watching over me making sure I don't do something stupid. They boss me around and drag me back inside whenever I run away from something that scares me. They're all so cold and emotionless- they're one of the things that terrify me most here in the Capitolite House.

I shakily lift myself up from my ball in the corner and make my way to the door. I stop several meters in front of Lisa and just wait silently until she realise I want her to move. I don't want to go within a few meters of _anyone, _even Lisa.

She gets the idea within a few seconds and rushes through the door. I follow a few seconds after and make my way down to the end of the hall where the stairs are.

I _could _take the elevator but it scares me too much, so I always take the stairs. It takes almost three times as long but I eventually get to the TV room where I find the freak show waiting for me.

Lulu, our very first victor is slumped on the couch, barely able to keep her eyes open that are dark from lack of sleep and she is shaking slightly. If she was a normal person the drugs she relies on would have killed her long ago, but being a victor she isn't allowed to die. None of us are allowed that.

I sort of like it when Lulu is like this. When she is on one of her highs she feels the need to chase me around with her arms outstretched asking for cuddles which scares the life out of me. When she is at a low- like now- she ignores me. I like that.

I guess when I was crowned Victor Lulu must have felt some need to look after me. She won when she was twelve and I won at thirteen, so we had some connection. She tried to make friends with me in her own, weird, drug addled way but I was far too scared to even be near her, let alone be her friend. After a while she just gave up on me... I can't say I wasn't glad.

Next to her is Ryder who has his eyes glazed over. He is looking at something that isn't there and muttering under his breath. No doubt off in some hallucination- one of the many he has every now and then. He doesn't even notice me come in the room.

In the year I have known him he has only ever been remotely normal once. The rest of the time he has been off in some psychosis known only to himself; a crazy terrifying high or in his robotic Steve form or pulling his hair out during one of his episodes. But once, only once when a spider crawled into the room and I went running did Ryder become himself. He found me curled up under my bed and coaxed me out. At that time he was sort of like an older brother; very gentle and kind, but it wasn't long before his mind set changed and he was in his terrifying robotic Steve mode that he switches to.

Jared, the biggest and scariest of all the victors glances up at me when he walks in but quickly turns to watching the blank TV screen when he sees who I am. I don't think I have ever heard him actually _try _to talk to me. I think he finds me weak and a disgrace to the Victors; I make him look bad because I make it look like it's easy to become a victor or something... as though being a victor could ever be easy. He looks the part of the ideal victor with Rose draped over his arm, rubbing his bare back. Clearly they were... interrupted.

I don't even go near Jared. He is the biggest and most brutal of us all. When I first met him he was in this strange fit of anger. Throwing things across the room, smashing vases and slamming doors, yelling his lungs out.

I got so distraught over that I was required to stay in the mental hospital for another fortnight.

Then, of course, there is Rose Eveleth who is trying to spark up a conversation with Jared who looks less than interested now that we're all together again. Rose always goes out of her way to throw a snarky or bitchy comment in my direction. I guess she thinks I'm a bit of a joke; she doesn't seem to buy the fact I can be terrified of everything. . .

"Look who it is," Rose says, "I'm surprised you came of your own accord. I thought the Officials would have had to drag you in."

I flinch a little at the thought and skit my way around the wall and sit on the far side of the couch. Away from the scary Victors.

We sit in silence for a few minutes. I stare at the blank screen like Jared does, just waiting for something to happen.

"I wish this stupid thing would hurry up," Jared snaps at the screen.

Ryder snaps out of his hallucination at that moment with a jolt. He looks around, confused about where he is. Then, for no apparent reason he begins to laugh hysterically and uncontrollably.

This is surprisingly common... Ryder going into one of his crazy, inexplicably happy modes. I admit it is a lot less scary then when he is severely depressed or being stiff and robotic, but his laugh is so dry and the look in his eye makes him look somewhat like a maniac.

I look at him warily, scooting over in my seat to get further away from him as he clutches his side and cackles madly. Lulu looks at him with vague interest, her eyes still droopy and fingers shaking.

"Shut up, will you?" Jared says with venom but Ryder just shrugs at him and continues to laugh.

A few seconds later there is a beeping sound and the TV comes to life with a picture of a very serious looking guy standing at a podium with the American flag pinned to the wall behind him.

When Ryder sees the TV, his laughing stops far too suddenly. His eyes widen at the TV and he becomes dead silent.

"Welcome, Citizens of America, to the Reaping of the 6th Games. As you know, the Reapings have been taking place over the last 24 hours and we now have our newest Tributes being escorted to the Capitol as we speak. As in previous years, the Tributes were selected by Colorado Automatic Tribute Selector known as the C.A.T.S computer. The Tributes were taken into our custody at all hours of the day and the event was captured by military droids. You are now about to see the collections happen. Enjoy."

""Enjoy?" Lulu speaks up for the first time since I entered the room. Her words are slurred and mumbled. "_Enjoy?_ How can we enjoy _this?_"

No one answers her... no one has an answer anyway.

My attention is turned back to the screen when an image of America appears on the screen. It remains on the screen momentarily before it zooms in on one of the states, flicking to an image of a house.

The words _Alabama _slide onto the screen followed by _4:32am_. It's early morning; I doubt anyone would even be up yet. . .

The camera follows two men in suits -much like the ones that took me from my home- as they walk up to the door and knock briskly.

You could hear a pin drop in the silence that follows as we wait for that door to be answered. I feel my chest tightening as I think of that poor, poor child sleeping safely in their bed who is about to be snatched away forever.

The door opens and a very sleepy man is seen in the doorway. His dopey eyes fly open wide when he sees who knocks.

"We are here to collect your daughter," says one of the men.

The father tries to plead but the men soon push past him and make their way into the house.

The men go through the house loudly and bang down doors in search for their tribute. Eventually they burst into a room where a girl snaps up from her sheets surprised and alert, her extremely thick white blonde hair is in tangles. When she sees the men she freezes up and begins to shake. The men quickly grab her and drag her out the house. She pleads, begs and drags her feet but it's no use. They throw her into the eerie white van and drive off.

A picture of the girl then flashes onto the screen with information about her, like her height and weight. Things people need to know when they wonder about her impending death.

_Roman Adair, age 15, _The screen says

It goes on like this for at least half an hour... A very rich boy from Alaska by the name of Denver is taken from his mansion. His father pleads and tries to bribe the men to spare his son but no money in the world could save him. The Arizona girl named Paige Anders is snatched up during a game of softball. She gets so distressed that she actually tries to fend off the men with her softball bat. She even gets a few decent hits in before she is slung over one of their shoulders and carried away.

Every Tribute reacts differently. Gavin, the New Jersey boy is collected out on his farm. He accepts his fate and doesn't fight, he just goes quietly. Elizabeth McIntosh from Minnesota is taken during her boxing training and she throws a few punches before she has to be tackled down and tasered.

And it goes on and on. Jiaying Li, a 13 year old Asian girl is snatched up during one of her violin lesson. Madison Harris from Florida is scooped away in a middle of a teenage shopping spree. The Hawaiian girl has to be pulled off her surfboard before being taken into the van. The Mississippi boy has to have his fingers prised of the keyboard of his computer that he desperately clings to.

Rose gets a little excited and pays a tad more attention when a fairly good looking boy from Michigan is interrupted in the middle of showering to be taken away.

The last boy to be reaped is from Wyoming. He reminds me so much of my reaping. He is a tiny little thing; only twelve-years-old. He was taken when he was just hanging out with some of his friends at a park. He didn't fight or stand his ground, he just did what I did; ran.

He ran and ran and ran and didn't look back. When he got tired he found a place to hide, but like me and countless others he was found and chucked into the van before being whisked away from his home.

When the van door closes his name appears on the screen- Jason Kang. Then his face fades away and the official looking man from the beginning of the Reaping is back.

"Thank you for watching," he says.

"Like we had a choice," Jared says sourly.

"We hope you enjoyed the Reaping," says the man as Lulu, Ryder, Rose and Jared scoff. "By tomorrow we shall have all of our Tributes in the Capitolite House being readied for the Games. Now, here is the complete final list of the 50 Tributes that will be participating in The 6th Annual Games. Thank you, and goodnight."

The man fades away and a list of the tributes appear on the screen with their picture and age next to them. Seeing the complete list scroll down the screen makes my body shake. To the Victors and the Tributes those names mean the _everything_. Those are the names of people that are standing in your way to living your life. But to the government that list is just a colour of names that stop the crime and keeps the peace in this country. . .

Alabama: (F) **Roman Adair**

Alaska: (M) **Denver L. Raylor, Jr.**

Arizona: (F)** Paige Anders**

Arkansas: (M) **Zac Alger**

California: (F) **Pandora Carlisle**

Colorado: (M)** John Wright III**

Connecticut: (F) **Audrey Landon**

Delaware: (M)** Matt Little**

Florida: (F) **Madison Harris**

Georgia: (M)** Landon Rutherford**

Hawaii: (F) **Leia Ryanee**

Idaho: (M) **Micheal McPhee**

Illinois: (F) **Janessa Crawford**

Indiana: (M) **Alfie Collins**

Iowa: (F) **Ev Daniels**

Kansas: (M)** Talon Smith**

Kentucky: (F) **Rosie Mae Carroway**

Louisiana: (M) **Ollie Markham**

Maine: (F) **Lauren Foote**

Maryland: (M) **Ernesto Morales**

Massachusetts: (F) **Karina Stone**

Michigan: (M) **Seth Collins**

Minnesota: (F) **Elizabeth MacIntosh**

Mississippi: (M) **Lux Verren**

Missouri: (F) **Alyssa Walmack**

Montana: (M)** Thomas Royal**

Nebraska: (F) **Lilion James**

Nevada: (M) **Quentin Blake**

New Hampshire: (F) **Ana Maria Selina**

New Jersey: (M) **Gavin Mulrose**

New Mexico: (F) **Laura Carrepa**

New York: (M) **Robert Bryson**

North Carolina: (F) **Cheshire Reese**

North Dakota: (M) **Tyler Williams**

Ohio: (F) **Emma Wolf**

Oklahoma: (M) **Alexander Besanco**

Oregon: (F) **Jiaying Li**

Pennsylvania: (M) **Lockie King**

Rhode Island: (F)** Cassandre Erizes**

South Carolina: (M) **Phil Carstin**

South Dakota: (F) **Amaine Sanders**

Tennessee: (M) **Toby Hager**

Texas: (F) **Mary Oakland**

Utah: (M) **Luke Higgins**

Vermont: (F) **Amy Smythe**

Virginia: (M) **Jace Carroway**

Washington: (F) **Alina Rizuka**

West Virginia: (M)** Arif Aboul-Nour**

Wisconsin: (F) **Joslyn Aguilar**

Wyoming: (M) **Jason Kang**

The American Anthem plays, the credits role then the TV shuts down and everything is silent.

Lulu gets up without a sound and clumsily makes her way to the door. Ryder quickly follows her, slinging her arm around his shoulder and helping her walk.

Then Rose grabs Jared hand and whispers something in his ear before she leads him out the door. I hear her footsteps tip toe down the hallway and fade away.

Then I am left alone. . .

That's one of the worst things about being Victor. Every friend you used to have is taken away from you. No one wants to be friends with a killer, so I can only find companionship in the other killers. But they have already settled themselves in nicely. Ryder and Lulu are basically inseparable. They are both so muddled up they don't even notice each other's flaws. Jared and Rose are always going off together. Even though I know both Jared and Rose are less than interested in personalities, they put up with each other without argument. Most of the time.

Then there is me.

I'm sure Lulu and Ryder would be more than happy to make their cosy little duo a trio, but I am too scared of both of them at the best of times to even consider that. And Rose and Jared are less than friendly towards me.

And that's one of the things the Games is designed to do. You have your life ripped away from you and even if you are the 'lucky' one to survive you never get your life back. The second you are thrown into that van your life has changed and there is _nothing, _not _anything _that can make it come back. . .

* * *

><p>Fight or Flight?<p>

Flight won't work; the Games have already caught me.

All I can do is fight. But I don't have anything to fight for any more.

* * *

><p><strong>Ashlee, Ryder, Lulu, Maddie and Taryn<strong>


	5. Madhouse

_You actually thought we could find a quote to describe the victors trying to teach?- Us_****  
><strong>**

* * *

><p><strong><strong>Madison Harris<strong>**

Aged 17

_Florida_

One would think that someone who's lived in Florida their entire life would be tanned. That someone who spends hours on the beach, lazily basking in the heat surrounded by her sun-kissed friends, would not be as pale as a sheet.

However, it appears that the odds have never been particularly in my favour. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if karma – or whatever higher being out there – just holds an unspoken, unexplained grudge against me that just causes everything in my life to go wrong.

I don't have a tan.

I'm not super tall.

I'm not as thin as my friends.

I don't have a tan.

I didn't get to meet my favourite boy band when they came to Florida last year.

Daddy put a limit on my debit card.

I don't have a tan.

My hair is ridiculously difficult to manage.

I don't have a tan.

Some people don't like me.

I'm pasty. With no tan.

Oh, and I was kidnapped in the middle of a shopping trip to take part in the Games. I mean how _embarrassing._ There were people _everywhere._ And it was _filmed._

I know the whole saying 'karma's only a bitch if you are,' – but seriously? Even if I did make off with Camilla Prescott's boyfriend, I _certainly_ don't deserve pasty skin.

Oh, or a death sentence.

And as I find myself sitting on a plush sofa before the craziest people in America's history, examining the bruises on my _extremely pale, pasty skin,_ I wonder just what I did to make the universe hate me so much.

_Whatever it was, I'm sorry. _

I clear my throat for the billionth time, my eyes flicking between the five figures before me, waiting for one of them to speak first.

None do. Which I should have expected, really, judging by who they are. What they've been through. What they're being forced to do.

I should hardly expect any words at all to come from the lips of the dark-haired young women sitting on the edge of the sofa opposite me. There's nothing warm or inviting about her, not from her washed out skin to her cheekbones basically popping out of her face to her huge, dark brown eyes, hazed and foggy but with a look so haunting I can barely stand to look in them for so long.

She clutches a cigarette between her fingers – lit. God knows what she's been dragging this entire time, but judging by her obvious disconnection to the current situation, I'm guessing some sort of anaesthetic. I've never been all that knowledgeable on drugs – I always stayed away from that scene.

Lulu, however, is barely the worst one: she's leaning into a stocky, broad-shouldered boy who, despite his extraordinary beauty, looks just as out of it as she does. Ryder Fletcher, for all his God-like structure, crystal blue eyes and hair that would land him in a shampoo commercial, is pretty much the craziest of the fivesome. His lips part, muttering words under his breath that I can't make out, and a shiver goes up my spine.

"_Kill. Blood._ No, Arthur, be quiet. _Cut their veins, watch the blood pour-"_

I shudder, turning my eyes from him to the little girl sitting directly in front of me. She's just as much in her own world as the other two, but she's shaking so much one would think there was an earthquake in this very room. Ash Lee, thirteen years old and with so much potential – and yet here she is, changed, another messed-up example of the outcome of the Games: a trembling, shivering, emotional mess. She turns her eyes towards me and immediately lets out a little yelp, averting her gaze quickly and pushing a strand of her dark hair from her face, whimpering softly.

Finally, the two on the edge of the sofa: Jared Klerk and Rose Eveleth. It's a well-known fact that those two would be described as the most "helpful" Victors, but as I look upon the two somehow I don't think they'd be of much use to me.

They sit a good distance apart from one another despite the fact it's been on gossip pages around the country that they're what would be described as "f*ck-buddies." Jared, his muscles bulging from his shirt, shoots me a hard look, his gaze steely and cold and he flexes absentmindedly, barely paying any attention to me, sneering whenever his eyes fall on my face before turning them away to scrutinize Ash.

Rose is just as disinterested, and I doubt she'd be of much use to me either. Rose Eveleth won her Games because of her cunning, quick thinking, and incredible looks. Flowing blonde hair, big blue eyes, perfect, porcelain skin, she looks like one of my old Barbie Dolls complete with a smirk that makes you feel inferior, or like the scum she's wiped off of her stilettos.

Rose was my initial plan, the Victor I would ask for help, to follow her lead, but it becomes immediately clear that winning the way Rose did would never work for me. I'm not stunningly attractive like her, no way: with my pasty skin, tangled blonde hair and one-too many freckles, it was my Daddy's money and my confidence that got me all my friends, my adoring followers.

Somehow, I don't think saying "My Daddy owns lots of businesses and could sue your sorry ass into oblivion unless you bow down and kiss my feet," would go down all too well with the Victors, much less the tributes.

I take one last look at the group before me, taking in their silence, before I turn my eyes to my shoes.

"I want to go home," I whisper softly. "Let me go home, please, I don't know… I don't know how to fight, I just… please. My Daddy will pay you whatever amount you'd like, my friends would want me home…. I don't want to die, let me go home, please-"

"-oh my God, enough with the whining," Rose says, cutting me off immediately with a scathing look. "Wah wah, boo hoo. Trust me kid, it's not just you; enough of those others waiting outside that door much less any of _us_ want to be here. Quit it with the tears, por favor."

Immediately, I stop. _So it speaks._ "Then tell me what to do. How do I survive? How do I win? How do I fight?"

_Quick recovery._

"Grab sword. Stab people. Run," she replies sarcastically, crossing one leg over the other.

Irritation seeps into my tone as I quickly brush away my tears. "Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Question is, _how_?"

Rose scowls at me and sits back. "I wouldn't be getting all smartass on me, kiddo. We're the ones who are supposed to tell you how to stay alive."

"Well, you haven't been doing so so far, have you? I reckon I'm pretty entitled to do whatever I want."

"You're from Florida, right?" Jared interrupts, cutting off Rose, who's eyes blaze with fury.

"Yes. Florida. I'm Maddison Harris, you know. My Dad is Mark Harris, surely you've heard of him, and I'm sure he'd be very angry to know that his money is going to waste on teaching me to stay alive. So – either you can give me some tips on how to live, or we can ask my Daddy to buy me out of this whole thing. I prefer the latter. Lovely talking to you, but-"

"City kids," Jared growls, interrupting me again. "The lot of them."

"You're not getting out of here," Rose adds on, rolling her eyes. "Sorry to break it to you, but you either win, or you die. So I suggest you shut the hell up, wash out that smartass mouth of yours and try listening."

* * *

><p><strong>Quentin Blake<strong>

Aged 15

_Nevada_

The meeting with the past victors is almost surreal. Basically I got dragged out of the room with my arms still around a chick and then after a quick nap I'm looking into the eyes of the five most insane people in the country. Rumour has it the sessions are worse than useless but since the only four people ever to have lived through them are still here now, it isn't exactly proven fact. Even so, I doubt my dad would ever let me go into the Games without at least trying to get me any help I could; I guess sometimes there's a reason to own a casino in Vegas and get to rake in the money while the other suckers only lose it.

I throw an easy wink at Rose; I guess it's hard to weed out a bad habit. Sure I have a girlfriend but I won her with a few grins and the odd wink plus fact has it that Rose is easier to get to than a 10th grade Honours student. I don't even bother with Lulu whose head is settled in Ryder's lap, her eyes completely glazed over as he sits rock solid, staring at a fixed point on the blemish-free walls as though his life depends on being able to pick out that exact colour of paint down to the molecule when at a store. Ash is a different level of unwinkable- it'd probably a.) give her a heart attack or b.) get me arrested even before I back up the wink with some action.

Jared's the guy I'd pick in a fight and watching the Games I reckon he's the guy to ask for advice as well; the only other one with a good strategy that didn't go nuts after a snake bite was Rose and I'm not exactly up for shagging every guy in a 100 yard radius and killing them. The chicks maybe but I think they'd have at least enough brain cells to realise that no one comes along for a night together in the Games without bringing the knives along as a 'third wheel.' Ash and Lulu's strategies worked for them as well, to an extent, but asking them where to hide's just weird and if I can't work that out on my own while on the run for my life, I deserve to have to use Jared's strategy and try to rip someone's ribcage open with my fingers.

I haven't been able to grip my thumb and forefinger around my bicep in a year and I'm definitely not overweight. Obese twelve year olds will be no match for my might and knowledge of kung fu from the _Karate Kid _movies. Plus the rule of action movies tells me that the fit eighteen year olds from Hicksville will always get annihilated by my extreme underdog status. All I need is that edge on the other ones in my underdog class who will undoubtedly try to kill me- brutally.

The problem with Plan 'Ask Jared' is the death stare he gives me as soon as I enter the door. Initially I wonder if it's a thing with the victors to hate people like the ones they had to kill but the others just look uninterested. It seems like Ash wants to be hiding under the table but keeps casting nervous glances at it as though it'll collapse and sits in a ball in the corner instead. Lulu and Ryder barely look at me while Rose gives me an eye over before winking back; causing Jared to snarl under his breath and whip his head towards her while I sit down, completely ignored.

"Nice to see you're all getting comfortable but out of curiosity, I was under the impression that this is draining the family fortune to _help _me? I really would like not dying- I don't think it sounds all that fun to be honest," I send a winning smile towards Jared. For a moment nothing happens and I can almost hear the cogs turning in his brain until his pupils shrink and then dilate rapidly. His eyes are almost black as he leaps over the table and slams me against the wall by the neck.

Bemusedly I think about Ash not sitting under the table because it might collapse and then Jared kicking it over before his face appears directly in front of mine.

"No one gives a _shit_ about you and your 'family fortune' city scum. I couldn't care less if you died in the first minute as someone carves that stupid grin into your neck. You don't know what it's like to be _us_, to have to live through the Games and then put up with arrogant little shits like you trouncing in here and demanding that we tell you how to win. Maybe your stupid little rich brain can't process the fact that there are 49 kids out there more deserving of winning the Games than you rich shits who've spent your whole lives getting pampered and now. Have. Your. Comeuppance," Jared hisses, punctuating his last words with punches to the ribs that feel like they've shattered the bones.

He doesn't even look finished yet and while I wheeze, I try to think of any benefits possible from being punched in the ribs and wondering how to activate ultra underdog status. Right now I'm really hoping it kicks in before Jared does the same to my head. A voice hisses from the corner and Jared turns away to see Ryder's head forward against his chest as he talks to himself, "Should I do anything about it?"

"But what if the kid dies and then we all get screwed over because of Jared?"

I don't get the chance to wonder what exactly Ryder's afraid of as Jared drops me to the ground, charging towards Ryder and attempting to deliver a crushing blow which Ryder grabs, his eyes blank as he turns away Jared's fist like he was the obese twelve year olds in my victory fantasies. Jared's other fist comes around, aiming for Ryder's jaw and it occurs to me that maybe the Karate Kid wasn't the best source of information for not getting annihilated in a fight. Bruce the bouncer did try to teach me to punch once and I forgot it about twenty minutes later when Dad came in with a Matrix movie marathon. Now would be a great time to learn if it weren't for the part where I can't see straight because of the pain in my ribs. Somehow I don't think I'm meant to use seven fingers to punch but hey- maybe they're just channelling the spirit of a fighter in one of those weird Japanese video games Dad bought cheap off EBay when he was trying to coax me away from the drinks floors in the casino.

This time the fist connects and there's a sickening cracking noise as Ryder's jaw moves fractionally to the left and stays there. I wasn't exactly planning a practical lesson when I walked in- least of all when I only managed to let my mouth run away from me once, my friends would've been impressed- but I am learning. Most importantly being the lesson that I never want to get punched in the jaw. Ever. I would sooner step on a Lego than have to do what Ryder does as he clicks his jaw back in, still devoid of emotion or pain, and slams his fist into Jared's abdomen.

Apparently Jared is a nutter with balls of steel- even as Ryder's punch goes low he still retaliates in kind while Rose tries to step in between them with a kiss on Jared's neck as she tries to move him. "You slut, piss off. It ain't any of your business who I fight with when you go and wink at some stupid city shit with his nose practically poking clouds in the ass he's got his head so high," he snarls and pushes her away from him as he turns back to Ryder. Lulu stands watching them both, clearly unwilling to pull Ryder away in case Jared kills him. He isn't doing too badly to be honest but I still like Lulu's strategy better. It's like in Skyrim- you let the giant and the dragon fight it out before you run in and finish one of them off.

It seems like no one outside the room gives a flying shit about Ryder and Jared's fight until Ash starts screaming. Hands over ears, she lets out a bloodcurdling screech that makes the hair rise on my neck and even stops Jared and Ryder in their tracks as they put their hands over the ears. Apparently it breaks some kind of wall with Ryder as he collapses and Lulu grabs him, finally pulling him away from Jared while Ash wails like a banshee- and I don't think it's their deaths she's predicting.

After a minute of wailing, Jared finally decides to take the advantage and kicks Ryder in the guts, causing Lulu to leap on him and tear at his face with her fingernails. You'd think that the opposite of pristine, inch long nails like Rose's would be bitten to stumps but apparently there's a mid-stage of 'claw-like' that leaves Jared bleeding from the eye to his mouth. Five men in suits charge in through the door, causing everyone in the room to freeze as though they're terrified. Lulu attempts to surreptitiously move her hand away from Jared's face and takes her place back beside Ryder on the floor, Ash stops shrieking to cover her eyes and curl into a seemingly impossible tighter ball while Rose puts her arm around Jared as he growls at the suited men.

"We leave you lot in here for five minutes and you're already fighting like animals. Jo, separate 'em and make them spend the rest of the day here and see how they like it. Maybe they'll start behaving like humans," the front suited man commands as the rest of them drag the victors out of the room.

His hand curls around my collar as he pulls me out of the room to be met with horrified glances from the others waiting for their turn. I turn to a brown haired girl and wink at her, "This ain't even the best I can do."

She just scowls as I get pulled out of the hallway and dumped outside the victor's suites and meeting rooms.

Lessons learned today:

1.) Dislocated jaw= bad.

2.) Skyrim logic is the best logic.

3.) Wailing= _great_ tactic.

4.) I'm so likely to win- no I can't even handle thinking that without snorting- I'm dead.

5.) I'm so dead.

6.) I'm so dead this needs to appear a third time. If the Games don't do it I reckon Jared will.

So if I'm f*cked anyway, maybe I can get Rose in on that part of the deal...

* * *

><p><strong>Lauren Foote<strong>

Aged 14

_Maine_**  
><strong>

When they came for me, I fought.

It was the first time I ever got into a physical spat with anyone. But in the long run, I suppose it had to happen sometime. Else I would have been going into the arena completely unblooded, without a whim of how to throw a punch or wither in a way that lets you shimmy free of those out to get you. My hunters were particularly good at what they do, however, and that fight was lost before it was even considered by anyone besides me.

Logic – my best friend, my _only_ friend – sunk its teeth into my mind later on, as I sat huddled into the corner of that terrifyingly white van. These Games were meant to control the rates of crime and death throughout the fifty states. Yet, I fought against them, quite simply because they went against everything moral and good and logical in the world.

_Why kill to control killers? _I wondered, constantly. If the ploy was meant to unite the American people, against the government, then they had succeeded in that at least. Accomplished that very thing by the corpses of forty-nine children a year. To stop the crime sprees rampaging throughout the country... well that's why they had the infamously broken victors.

And they were all I had as well. My lifelines, my mentors. The people my rich, uncaring parents paid for me to receive just because I was a charity that needed tending.

The first day, the first mentor I got to receive for an hour, tops, was a man known for his blackening rages. I remembered his Games vividly... the way he clawed himself into a tree just to push out the girl who teased him from above. The boy whose neck he snapped. Another time where he was cut across the chest and he ripped apart the other kid's ribcage in response.

I couldn't be him. I knew this and he knew this so we sat in that room staring at the walls. He took pity on me, even while I disgusted him. "Don't let them trap you, little girl," he said. Grunted, actually. His tone had almost been kind and hummed with an emphasis of the south. A place I've never actually seen before. Maine was a cold, rocky state that I called home. I missed the snow even with how little I had strayed from my computer's screen.

Jared's accent only made me remember how much I lost. All the things I would be losing in a short amount of time.

When he looked at me, critically, I shrunk on the inside. Fidgety, I pushed up the thick-framed glasses sliding down the bridge of my nose and shifted. Around us was a room big enough for a gym. Weapons slung themselves across the walls of all different kinds, mats spanned out on the south end of the wooden floors and we sat on the awkward array of seats in the middle of it all.

"What?" I asked. I wouldn't let my insecurities show. He could think I'm ugly. This stupid, rage-induced victor could think me stupider than a rock or cleverer than a fox, as dead as a doornail in a few days time, or whatever he wanted to judge. I couldn't change that though...

...the thought he might be judging me secretly bit into my heart like inch long fangs. A similar sort of pain I got when thinking of my nonexistent parents.

As a reflex, I resented them. Jared. Mother and father. All those other illogical people out in the world. I shut them out. They couldn't help me, I was going to die in these Games.

_But oh, how much I wished for a savior. _

As the Games were mandatory to see at any age, they became a part of my world at the delicate age of nine. They weren't too scary, really. Not when my gentle spirited housekeeper, part-time caretaker, and mostly the only real mother I'd ever known, held me. Loretta would whisper into my ears that they were only a _Game_. Just another television show with special effects and actors. They only pretend to scream in agony while allies turned on them to cut open their throats.

That may have worked with some other child, but not me. I was insightful even when I was so young. Not afraid to accept cold, cruel truths. Not afraid to face the _world_. And I knew they were real. They were our nation's punishment for misbehavior. Our redemption for all those sins they blamed each and every one of us for.

The second hour during which I was submitted to a victor's fabulous advice was spent worriedly looking at a girl-woman clearly on the verge of an over dose. I could not say what age she was and, at first, I mistook her to be Rose, the oldest female victor of the lot, because she just seemed so _aged. _A hundred years of misery gleamed from the girl's eyes. It was only when I noticed the drool on her chin that she was obviously our drug-crazed victor, our first victor. The government's pride and joy, groomed straight from the fires of hell.

Lulu didn't even seem to look at me, let alone criticize me.

I stayed well away from her during the session. I didn't trust any of those victors, no more than I could throw them. Logically, Lulu may have been the only one who could help me. She was the _first_ victor. She beat the odds at the young age of twelve, and I was fourteen, hardly knew a thing about nature and spent the better half of my short adolescence in a library or in front of a computer screen. I couldn't stand out in a crowd, couldn't sweet talk allies. Fights were not good for girls as skinny as me, with long unruly brown curls vulnerable to pulling or being used as a leash. As blind as a bat without my glasses. My mother and father, who gave a great deal of grudging kindness to their only daughter in such a dire time, forced me to accept the contacts they purchased as a gift.

I puzzled myself over them. One part of me saw the logic behind their reasonings. If I lost my glasses, if they were taken from me or broken by mishap, then I was virtually only a girl waiting around to die, stumbling and reaching out with my hands for the nearest tree. Trees were more trusting than people, in my mind's eye.

The other part, the little girl in me, the one that hated my workaholic parents, the same ones I only got to see every Sunday, wanted to refuse their pity gifts. I loathed their money. I loathed everything that was them. The way my mother laughed, got her nails done and urged me to like make-up or boys. All the times I'd seen my father drunk, blundering on and on about business deals.

Hiding in my room became a hobby. I was too ignorant to see the bigger picture and accept those contacts. I liked my glasses. I _trusted_ them. The thought of changing that one small comfort while surrounded by all this other change unnerved me. They seemed uncomfortable to set in my eyes, they weren't going to help me get sponsors, or an interview, or allies. I had to do all that on my own.

By the time I found myself in a third hour of victor instruction, I wondered how much money I was wasting for my parents. Did they care for what they had to spare? Were they just tossing a few pennies to their hopeless mess of a daughter while they just sat in their fancy house and drunk from pretty glasses? Would they miss me, or buy a new daughter to replace me the moment I fall? I had my father's dark green eyes, they couldn't _buy_ that in a new kid.

That opted a few inches of pride in me. Something that rarely burrowed itself above hidden doubts and insecurities.

Proud of being something that was theirs, something originally unrepeatable in some sense, I took up a knife on the far end of the hall. My father's knife had been shinier and its blade was smoother to work with, less choppy, when carving into the block of wood I asked a nearby worker to bring me. Father taught me few things and most of them I disliked so greatly he gave up trying by the time I was eleven. One thing stuck, something he taught me at a young age, a crafty thing he did as a boy: carving wood.

That was how the third victor found me. He grinned wickedly at the sight of the knife. The first smile I'd received since coming to these tribute confinement buildings. Temptation leaked into my soul like an inky blackness seeps through thin paper. An urge to smile back washed over me. My walls of indifference tumbled down by just one twitch of a stranger's lips. I tried desperately to bury my want to trust him..

"You're Ryder," I said instead, smiling faintly. There were only two male victors in existence, and I'd already met the other one, so I knew who this was immediately. Logically, people assumed the majority of the victors would be male. The numbers shown now-a-days, of a more female to less male ratio, confounded them. Not me. It made sense to me that all those tributes that went in the arena focused more on killing other males, than the inconvenient females. In the end, frailty outwitted and out assumed the Y chromosomes.

"They told me your name is Lauren, the ones that stand outside the door..." His voice lowered a few tones as he dropped himself on the ground next to me, criss-crossing his legs. Something was in the back of his eyes that I hadn't noticed before, his beauty seemed to fade and waver momentarily to reveal an entirely different creature.

The smile on my lips curled up and died.

"That knife, it's very pretty. Don't you think?"

_The Mad Victor. _It was always a joke in my town and in my social circles. The _Mad _Victor was the interchangeable nickname, the one that everyone dubbed on the only male winners of these Games. Both hopelessly, brokenly _mad. _One was in the sense of rage and the other literally insane.

I didn't respond to his question; it was my first mistake. My hands deftly worked at the wood, carving the resemblance of a flute. If I worked at this piece for a few days, it might have actually been an instrument meant to sing prettily... I could do that much, at least. Otherwise, my second mistake, was that I had decided the best course of action was to ignore the Mad Victor, just as I did with the victors before him.

Paranoia seeped into his tone. "What do you do with pretty knifes?"

Stubborn and uncertain, but clever enough not to make eye contact, I stared at my work in complete silence.

"You're planning something aren't you!" He stood so abruptly I bristled underneath my skin, overtly aware that he towered over me like this. Slowly, I inched away from his legs, eyes down. "They sent you here to kill me- just like before.." Ryder looked around the room, seeing things that I could never imagine. People, children who tried to kill him, who he killed, trees that were in a big arena...

I was nearly pulling myself up on the chair when he began to whisper, "_No, no Arthur. She looks so nice... Well, no, but.. Yes! She's holding a knife, but she's just..." _He argued with inner beasts, with other people made up in his head.

I was unprepared when he lunged at me.

The knife clattered to the floor, spinning, whirling around, glinting in the light overhead. His hands wrapped around my wrists tightly, threw me against the silk fabric of the chair and his breath clouded my face. Ryder's weight against mine made me powerless, helpless.

It was gone in moments. Before he had any real chance to harm me. Capitolite attendants tore him away. The man thrashed in their arms, kicked the floor with his heels, threw his head wildly... back and forth, back and forth. _Crazed. _

Huddled up on the couch, arms wrapped around my shoulders, I stared after them. Attempting with all the thought I possessed in that moment to come up with a logical reason for any of this. It all came back to that. But this time, I was blank. _Why would he think I meant to kill him? How could there be other people inside his head, truly? Was he really meant to help me win these Games? Would my parents actually send me a homicidal, mentally unstable boy as my only hope of living? _

Most of all, I wondered: _Was this my future? _Would I come back like him? Another Mad Victor, full of resentment, ready to join the array of broken artifacts. Angrier than Jared. Vaguer than Lulu. Crazier than Ryder. Lauren, the nerd that blew a fuse.

The nights I had spent in the assigned, cold and unused bed that felt so strange to me were inundated with nightmares. Even before the slaughter I feared to sleep. As a child, I never had this problem, but with me so restless, so uncertain, the world of unconsciousness was one full of truth.

On the last session of training, I got the "lucky" chance of being with two of the victors in one hour. They came in at the same time, one swaggering and the other led in by a care-taker who uttered soft reassurances, at a respectable distance, so as to not frighten her.

Rose was the sort of girl who I avoided at school. Pretty, confident, with make-up and boys and basically everything I'm not. But she was clever, as clever as me. I knew she would slice me to pieces moments after those beautiful eyes found mine. To her, I was a boring cause. A _lost_ cause. She was the same sort of person that would tease me, like all those others, and I wanted to hide from her. Shut her out just like the rest. There was not even a sliver of hope in trusting her.

She was the only one who helped me.

Ash squeaked when I looked at her. Brown skinned, little and meek, she looked like a puppy in that chair, curled up around herself. I felt _old_ looking at her, and also, a smidgen of hope. Logically, if someone as little as her could outlive forty-nine other kids, _I could too. _

They were both content on ignoring me. Ash was peeking at me constantly over her kneecaps, expansive brown eyes shadowing a world of fear. Rose sat languidly, sprawled out, one manicured hand running absently through the length of her shiny blonde hair. I thought about it ten times over, what words I might have said. I hesitated more than once, opening my mouth, then closing it. Was there even a point? Would she be any different from the others?

Logically, there was only one question to ask: "How do I win?"

Rose looked up, as if surprised to hear me speak. As if she was just noticing me for the first time. Expressions changed a million a minute with her; relaxed and calm, to startled and wavering, then annoyed, amused... all the way until she fixed onto one hard thin-lipped facial expression that made me grimace inwardly.

"You don't."

* * *

><p><strong>Seth Collins<strong>

Aged 18

_Michigan_

To be perfectly honest, I don't get why this whole thing is such a big deal. I watched the first five Games and in actuality, I was surprised the government actually found the balls to take action like that. So when I was taken in, like so many other kids before me, I didn't fight it. Why would I? Why fight what's inevitable? The fighting should be saved for the battles where it counts. In the arena I bet there will be plenty of them.

Of course my parents forked out the money to hand me over for some quality time with the Victors. They were constantly trying to please me, appeal to me. What they didn't get was that I was a solitary person by nature. I didn't need them, I didn't need friends. I mean, all I really did was surf the internet. But whatever. When it comes to the Games, I bet I'll be glad of my antisocial nature. There's only person you can ever trust in life, and it's yourself.

We're here to pay for what others have done. Fifty kids, all dragged in kicking and screaming, to suffer for one nation's struggle for total control. The sacrifices known as our lives are meant to exert some kind of control over the US, to whip them into shape. It's meant to wipe out crime, and for once I think the government's got it right. You don't win the hearts of the people to keep them in line. You make sure they respect your authority. That they fear you.

I'm ushered into the training room to meet with the Victors. Most people would be nervous, trying to make a good impression. After all, these people are pretty much celebrities. Sure they're pretty much all screwed-up in the head, but that's because they're weak. There's one that seems strong, one whose tactics I scrutinized with great interest. But she's still pathetic, because she was afraid. Fear is what makes you weak. I glance at the Victors when I enter – and hell, they're nothing special.

Lulu St Clare, the Victor from the 1st Games, stares right through me into nothing. Her eyes are glassy and lifeless, and she could almost be dead except for the fact that her breath rattles out from between her lips. God, what a joke. The dark-haired girl just sits there on the couch, oblivious to everything around her. She's probably in her own little world right now – or maybe she's back in the arena. I guess I'll never know what goes on inside that fractured mind.

Rose Eveleth is sprawled across the couch like she owns the place, her glossy blonde hair falling nearly to her waist. Sure, she's hot, and it's her tactics of manipulation that I plan to use, but that doesn't mean I admire her in any way. We're both self-centred, caring for nothing beyond our own survival. Arrogant, in a way. Her overconfident air is a bit spoiled by a bruise on her cheek. She observes me with a saccharine smile across her lips, but I know the game she's playing. It's the same one I intend to play. This time, she loses.

Jared Klerk stands around with his arms folded. He's the Victor of the 3rd Games, and he's always thought he was such a big man. Like the whole country doesn't know he's just as feral as the rest of them. I'm guessing he's where Rose got that nice purple bruise from. Jared watches me with an accusatory glance as I cross the room. From his reputation, I suppose I should be lucky he hasn't chosen to land a punch.

Ryder Fletcher is sitting down muttering to himself. He's beside Lulu, which doesn't surprise me in the least. Those two seem to have some psycho-f*ck relationship going on. He doesn't even look up at me, still too involved in his internal debate. Well, I think I'll leave him to it then. Getting advice from him seems like it would be getting the opinions of three different people at once.

Ash Lee whimpers and looks up at me with wide, frightened eyes. I remember now – the kid that's afraid of everything. I smirk and lean closer, causing her to leap backwards with a cry of fright. Jared scowls across at me, but makes no move to help Ash or harm me. Rose glances at Ash with a wryly amused expression, before she lazily pats the spot beside her, still with that falsely charming smile.

"Come sit down. It's Seth Collins, right?"

Jared rolls his eyes. "Like you don't know that, Rose."

I shrug and sit down beside Rose. They think they're big tough people because they've won the Games. They think it gives them the right to look down on me. Well, I'm not just some other kid being thrown into the arena. I'm going to show them I have what it takes, and I'm going to start by messing with them first. Rose puts a hand on my leg and I let her. If she thinks she's winning, so be it.

"You're Jared Klerk." I glance at him. Across the room, Lulu has started to brighten, chattering animatedly to Ryder. He nods every now and again, seeming to depart slightly from the mental shell that he's trapped in.

"So?" Jared scowls again. I wonder if this guy ever smiles. He seems like he hates everything and everyone. Well, he can be happy sometimes I guess…but not when it involves having to advise weakling kids going into the Games. "Look, kid, let's get this straight. Once you're in that arena, you're playing to survive, not win. There's a difference. That's the first thing you've got to understand."

"Not again!" Ryder suddenly shouts, startling Ash who nearly jumps out of her skin once more. Lulu places a hand on his arm but he jerks away, curling his knees to his chest, holding himself tight because that's the only comfort he can stand. "Keep them away from me!"

I watch impassively. Jeez, what a madhouse. As Ryder's violent bout of insanity worsens, Lulu hauls him up and leads him from the room. Ash has her hands pressed over her ears and is rocking to herself, eyes screwed tightly shut. Once the druggie and her ranting friend have left the room, I turn my attention back to the remaining Victors.

"What scares him so badly? The arena? Is that what scares you?"

Ash yelps in fright at the mention of the place and Jared's eyes narrows. His large hands clench into beefy fists and I know that he wants to punch me. Rose remains indifferent, studying her French-manicured nails like the topic bores her. Deep inside, she's screaming, I know. I just want to see it on the outside, too. Jared snarls and takes a step towards me, but he doesn't touch me. He desperately wants to hurt me, I know he does. That's what makes it all the sweeter.

"Aren't you scared?" Rose inquires calmly, raising an eyebrow. She's so cool about this, so collected. I just want to shake her until I see the fear in her eyes, until I have the knowledge that she isn't as unbreakable as she likes to believe. I just want to say 'scream, damn you!'. I'm the only one who has no mercy. She isn't as heartless as she likes to seem.

Ash is always afraid, but I can tell that Jared is on edge as well. He is watching me uneasily, and his fists remain tightly clenched. I've struck a nerve, good. I smile innocently and he bares his teeth. I know all about how violent he can be and I think there must be some contract about not hitting the tributes, because otherwise I think he would definitely have punched me out. He so wants to. He's scared, so why isn't that stupid blonde bitch scared too?

"Are you?" I ask of Rose, before my hands tighten around her slender neck. Her eyes widen and she starts to choke. I see it then, what I've been looking for – there is something she's afraid of. Ash is crying loudly as I tighten my grip, almost hysterical. Rose claws at my hands desperately until someone lifts me and throws me across the room. Jared stands over me, looking incensed. I don't think it's because I hurt Rose, but rather because he knows I'm a threat.

"You're not scared," Jared observes, sneering, "So already, you lose."

* * *

><p><strong>This probably should have been at the start of the other chapter but anywho~ We're really sorry we couldn't take in all the tributes. We probably could have done the Games only using females considering all the submissions that we got so we apologise that we couldn't take all of them but that's how it is. Some were really unlucky in being submitted right after we finalised the list so if yours was one of them we're also sorry. Hopefully you all keep reading even without your tributes in it because we loved reading through all your tributes and appreciate your support in helping us start the Games.<strong>

**To explain the huge break: we had a few people ask if this was Summer Break. It was sort of anti-summer break. 80% of us are Australian so we're reaaaaaally busy right now and you'll actually get more updates when we're really on our summer break.  
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**Why are there only 4 POVs? There's an accompanying video to this chapter that'll be up soon in the place of POV 5 but there's some technical difficulties on that end so you'll have to wait.  
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**Posted by the occasionally tacit approval of:  
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**Taryn, Maddie, Lulu, Ashlee and Ryder  
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